An Eclectic Journal of Opinion, History, Poetry and General Bloviating

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Why Mitt’s Great Grandpa Skipped to Mexico—The War on Mormons

Mormon men, including Church Elders, held in Federal Prison for Polygamy.

Mitt Romney’s Mormon heritagehas been an issue bubbling just below
the surface since his announcement that he was running for president.As he slogged through the primaries while desperate
Tea Baggers, assorted religious
zealots and Ayn Rand fan boys
desperately ran through one any-body-but-Mitt possibility one after the other,
the word was out that the crucial Evangelical
block would not support a member of the anti-Christian cult.

Since
clinching the nomination, some Democrats
have delighted in mocking the more bizarre aspects of Mormonism from after death baptism of Jews to funny secret underwear.Lately immigration and marriage equality
activists have brought up the flight of his great grandfather and father to
Mexico to avoid prosecution as polygamists
and to continue to enjoytheir plural marriages.Even his dad, George Romney was born there before fleeing back to the United States during the Mexican Revolution.

But
few American who did not grow up Mormon themselves or who did not live in Utah or one of the other Western states with major Mormon population
have any idea about the back story to that episode.Even fewer realize the political implications
that are felt to this day.

The
story below explains why the secretive leadership of the Church of the Latter Day Saints has always cultivated political
influence and tried to secure the election of Mormons to high office from both
political parties.It explains the
almost desperate drive to expand membership, particularly in Western states, so
as to become so large and powerful that no governmental suppression could ever
touch them again.And it explains the
secret desire to place one of their own at last in the very center of power.Mitt Romney might be a stiff sock puppet,
careless elitist snob, and willing tool of an oligarchy of powerful rich men to
others.But to Mormon leaders, he is literally
a savior.

On September 25, 1890 Wilford Woodruff, President and Prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints came down
to his office looking haggard.He had
not slept much the night before, he told his secretary.He had been in consultation with God and in the night God had given him a vision
of the fate of the church and its people if the practice of polygamy did not end—the Temples would be sized and violated, the
President and the Apostles would be imprisoned, and the possessions of all of
the people confiscated.With this revelation in hand, Woodruff went to the Apostles—a council of Twelve senior members—who approved a Manifesto renouncing plural marriage.On October 1 the Manifesto was made known to the national press.It was confirmed, at the insistence of the Federal Government at a Church General Conference on October 4.

Although Woodruff insisted
he was acting only in accordance with instructions from God and not out of any
worldly political considerations, it looked too much of the nation like the
Mormons were caving to decades of escalating pressure against them by the
Federal government.

Plural marriage, the
preferred Mormon term for polygamy, was not part original Mormon practice as
reveled to the Prophet Joseph Smith.It seems to have been introduced
through proselytizing and the absorption of a small polygamous sect in rural Maine.In
1843 Smith received a private revelation approving of plural marriage, at least
for himself and the Apostles.The
justification was the need to “rise up the seed of a new priesthood”—rapidly
grow the society.

Smith and the Church
continued to publicly condemn polygamy and deny participation in it, but it
became an open secret in the Illinois settlement
of Nauvoo, where the first Temple
was built.Much of the public antipathy
to the Mormons grew out of the suspicion that polygamy was sanctioned or
practiced and it helped lead to Smith’s assassination and the Mormon exodus
from Nauvoo.

Polygamy was not publicly
proclaimed until 1852, five years after the Mormons arrived in Utah, and eight years after Smith’s death. Smith’s
successor Brigham Young, who had
led his people half way across the continent to their promised land, was an
open polygamist.

The practice scandalized
those back east and political pressure began to build to suppress the
practice.President James Buchannan dispatched the Army to Utah Territory in 1857, beginning the so-called
Mormon or Utah War.The church had over-played its hand in persecuting non-Mormons in the
territory when a Mormon militia attacked and massacred an immigrant wagon train
from Missouri at
remote Mountain Meadows because
some of its leaders were thought to have participated in past persecution of
them.The Army eventually occupied Salt Lake City. Brigham Young was stripped of his
post as Territorial Governor and was replaced
by an eastern Gentile. Young
delivered up elder John D. Lee as the
responsible person for the massacre and continued to run a parallel, shadow
government.

The infant Republican Party made the suppression of polygamy
an important part of their platform.When Abraham Lincoln came to
the Presidency, however, he needed the support of Young and Mormon power in
Utah to keep open the overland route to California
and as a bulwark against Confederate ambitions in New Mexico.When the Republican Congress passed the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act which outlawed polygamy in States and Territories
in 1862, Lincoln privately assured Young that he would not attempt to enforce
it if the Mormon’s continued support of the Union
cause.A temporary truce of sorts over
the issue was in force.

Then
in 1874 Congress passed the Poland Act which
facilitated charging individuals with violations of the polygamy ban.As a show of force prominent Mormon leaders,
including Brigham Young’s personal secretary, were arrested and prosecuted for
plural marriage.The Mormons reacted
with defiance.In the 1876 the doctrine
authorizing plural marriage was officially published in a revised version of
the Church’s Doctrine and Covenants for the
first time.

The Edmunds Act of 1882 made “cohabitating with more
than one woman” a crime. Those who believed in polygamy could not try
polygamists either as a judge or juror and polygamists and their spouses were
banned from holding any office in any territorial voting. With the majority of Utah’s residents thus
excluded from voting anti-Mormons filled the Territorial legislature and took
control of the educational system.

By the mid-80’s
authorities, led by Federal Marshalls, began what the Mormons call “The Great
Raid.”Communities across Utah and
adjacent southern Idaho were visited, homes raided at night, and children
separated from their parents and questioned about their parents.Hundreds, probably thousands of men and their
families fled to Mexico or Canada including Romney’s ancestors.

The aim to actually destroy the church was made clearer in yet another
piece of legislation, Edmunds-Tucker Act
of 1887. The Territorial Militia, composed mostly of Mormons was abolished
and ordered to disarm. Fornication and adultery became Federal crimes meaning
that polygamists could be charged with multiple offences.Children born to polygamist fathers could not
inherit from them.

Most ominously, the
legislation disincorporated the
Church, confiscated its properties, and even threatened seizure of its Temples
without which believing Mormons could not uphold the requirements of the
faith.The Mormons were in disarray and
despair.In Utah alone there had been
more than 2000 prosecutions for polygamy, adultery, and fornication.Many men were convicted on multiple counts
for each year married to each wife and were essentially held in prison
indefinitely.Courts held the ban against
cohabitation even extended to women in separate households if they were financially
supported in any way, instantly impoverishing thousands of women.Much of the church leadership was in hiding
and many had active warrants out against them.President and Prophet John Taylor died
while in hiding.

Taylor’s successor
Woodruff was desperately seeking a solution.In 1887 and 1888 he had asked the Quorum
of Apostles if the Church should abandon polygamy.In both cases Woodruff was told that they could not bend to temporal law
in violation of “revealed truth.” Only the revealed word of the Lord could end
the practice.

In 1890 the Supreme Court upheld the Edmunds-Tucker Act and
legal action to seize church properties, including the Temples, was begun.Additional legislation was introduced in
Congress that would bar all Mormons from holding office or voting whether they
practiced plural marriage or not.

It was in this context
that God apparently finally spoke to the President.

Even though the Manifesto
as approved by the General Convention allowed previously married men to keep
their wives and families and skirted the issue of sanctions for violating the
ban, it was enough to relieve pressure on the Mormons.Raids and prosecutions fell off sharply and
movement on the suit to seize church property was halted.

In 1893 Church property
was returned and in 1894 Democratic
President Grover Cleveland issued a general amnesty and the Church
replied by the dissolving the Mormon dominated People’s Party.Although
Mormons generally tended to support Democrats
because their persecution was spearheaded by the GOP, Church leaders split affiliation with the
two parties to assure support for both for the final push to the long cherished
dream of statehood.

In 1896 Utah was finally
admitted to the Union and the Church issued another Manifesto, this one
supporting the separation of Church and
State.

But the controversy was
not entirely over.Senate Republicans blocked seating Senator elect Reed Smoot because polygamy had not been
eradicated in Utah.Indeed, some plural
marriages continued to be sanctioned in Utah by some members of the
Apostles.New President Joseph F. Smith, a great-nephew of founder,
issued a Second Manifesto on Polygamy which
explicitly excommunicating those practicing polygamy.

To this day Church leaders
flatly declare that no “recognized members of the church,” practice plural
marriage.Yet it persists, largely in
remote and rural areas.A tiny Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day
Saints and other break away groupshave been
organized and continue to endorse the practice.Prosecutions are once again on the rise in Utah.

Meanwhile the Mormons have
carefully burnished a public image of fostering an idealized, if paternalistic,
family life featuring clean living, close relationships, and fervent support
for traditional values.On social issues, particularly abortion and
marriage equality, they have sought to make common ground with the Evangelical Religious Right, and conservative Catholics.

Can the Saints ever shake
the stained heritage of polygamy?Can
they find safety and security from persecution as part of a broader
Conservative movement?Can they put
their own man in the White House?Stand by for the results.